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About Rene Michalak

As Project Lead for ReThink Red Deer and Education Chair of the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, I've helped bring resilient community planning to the forefront of public dialogue in Central Alberta. I'm currently studying biomimicry and resilience theory; exploring urban ecological systems to understand the foundations of community sustainability. I'm a Marketing graduate of the Haskayne School of Business (UofC) and Red Deer's Leadership Centre, a certified Transition Towns trainer, Rainwater Harvesting System Installer, and practising permaculture designer and SPIN-Farmer.

I came to be interested in permaculture after learning about sustainability and resilience - pouring over hundreds of books and videos, attending conferences, workshops and seminars. I ran into an up-and-coming permaculture trainer and then quickly registered for the first PDC in Alberta back in 2009. I came home overflowing with enthusiasm and got to work on my 2-year practicum; hosting a major regional conference on sustainability presented from a food, fuel and finance lens, and then set up an urban homestead complete with a rainwater harvesting system, hoophouse, annual garden and perennial food forest.

My time pracitising permaculture is spent developing the Centre for Urban Agriculture in Alberta Urban Homestead - planting and cultivating the food forest garden, developing a rainwater-fed aeroponic and an aquaponic growing system (www.foodgarage.ca) for four-season growing in Canada's unforgiving but beautiful northern climate, helping build community gardens throughout my home town of Red Deer, and increasing participation in the provincial Growing Food Security in Alberta Network (www.foodsecurityalberta.org) to develop and apply a framework in rural communities for Sustainable, Equitable, Local and Regenerative Systems for food (SELRS).

Updates

The CANARM Prairie Chapter 2014 Fall Training Tour, led by Rene Michalak, turned out to be a valuable research and development exercise. Numerous commercial and residential rainwater harvesting systems were inventoried and promoted to increase awareness o